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Ken Dryden hasn’t had a chance to sit down with Sidney Crosby since the Pittsburgh Penguins star became inextricably linked with concussions.

It’s a shame, too, because, as the Montreal Canadiens legend criss-crosses the country prompting dialogue on “the number one issue in sports,” he’d find it tremendously helpful to pick Crosby’s much-talked-about brain.

“Hockey has changed overwhelmingly, and I would bet Sidney was playing differently this year than how he played before his (first concussion),” said Dryden, in Calgary last night for his first of two symposiums on concussions.

“The terrific thing is he’s doing it in a way that was just as effective as he was playing before. There are ways to adapt — that’s the biggest challenge.”

Dryden isn’t alone in believing more needs to be discussed and done about concussions — just ask any hockey parent. So, Dryden is taking it upon himself to help initiate talks involving everyone from doctors and trainers to scientists and, most importantly, players with an eye on better understanding, combating and reducing brain injuries.

“We may not be aware at all how players are already making adaptations, so wouldn’t it be great if they talked about that?” said Dryden, a noted author, politician, businessman, Hall of Famer and officer of the Order of Canada.

“Players and coaches are incredibly creative because they’re competitive. One of the arguments you always get is from people saying they are hockey purists — they say ‘this is just the way the game is played. You can’t change it.’ You want to say to them, ‘if you knew your hockey history as much as you claim, you’d know it used to be seven-on-seven and no substitutions, and for the first 50 years of hockey, you couldn’t pass it forward, only backwards. This game is always changing, so the question is how do we meet the challenges? It’s much faster. How do we adapt?”

If you’re Dryden, you use your ample mind to gather stakeholders like the panelists at the Calgary Petroleum Club Tuesday morning who will follow a sold-out breakfast with a healthy exchange of ideas. Retired Toronto Maple Leafs icon Wendel Clark, former Calgary Stampeders quarterback Dave Dickenson, skier Kerrin-Lee Gartner, Flames doctor Minne Meeuwisse and snowboarder Kevin Pearce all have an extensive history with concussions and will share their thoughts as part of a fundraiser for the Association of the Rehabilitation of the brain-injured in Calgary (ARBI).

“This is a chance to put on something that really is a candy store experience with all those different voices you’d like to have in a room,” said Dryden, who took part in a similar chat Monday night at the University of Calgary.

“This is the moment to put everybody affected together in the same room: Those athletes who’ve suffered — let them tell their story. What’s it like? What’s it like to be a parent? And then doctors and researchers: What do and don’t you know? What is the next big thing? When will you know the things you need to know? What is the role of the trainer in terms of returning to play? This is the moment to puzzle it out, identify the things we know and don’t know and get to the best decisions we can make tomorrow.”

Dryden has spent the last two years writing articles on the subject, driven by a passion to find the next big issue society will look back at 50 years from now and shake its collective head wondering why we didn’t know better. He lumps todays concussions in with yesteryear’s approach to cigarette smoking, seatbelts and even women’s rights.

“We say ‘my god, how could people have been so stupid,’” said Dryden, 65.

“In terms of sports, I think it’s head injuries. I think people will look back at us and say, ‘how could they not have known that, given the speed of collision and force of impact and frequency, there wouldn’t be consequences? If we don’t do significantly better at it, there will be significantly fewer kids playing and more adults feeling more of an impact from it.”

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Ken Dryden talks concussions

Ken Dryden hasn’t had a chance to sit down with Sidney Crosby since the Pittsburgh Penguins star became inextricably linked with concussions.

It’s a shame, too, because, as the Montreal Canadiens legend criss-crosses the country prompting dialogue on “the number one issue in sports,” he’d find it tremendously helpful to pick Crosby’s much-talked-about brain.

“Hockey has changed overwhelmingly, and I would bet Sidney was playing differently this year than how he played before his (first concussion),” said Dryden, in Calgary last night for his first of two symposiums on concussions.

“The terrific thing is he’s doing it in a way that was just as effective as he was playing before. There are ways to adapt — that’s the biggest challenge.”

Dryden isn’t alone in believing more needs to be discussed and done about concussions — just ask any hockey parent. So, Dryden is taking it upon himself to help initiate talks involving everyone from doctors and trai